Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Two nights before, an air bubble had taken up residence near the top of my throat for several hours, refusing to pop. I convinced myself I was in the
throes of what would be a fatal heart attack. Who would find my corpse? I live alone.

I got dressed and walked around the block several times. If I collapsed in public, at least my decomposing remains wouldn't have to wait until the next day to be found, after I failed to show up for work.

I survived to see the next morning, when a sudden migraine jab on the left side of my head at the beginning of my 5am shift had me preparing for the worst
for the second time in less than 12 hours. A stroke? I braced myself for one side of my body to go numb. An hour or two later, it hadn't, so I went about
my day, cranial discomfort and slight nausea be damned.

The following morning at 5.30am, I tried to ignore the sharp pain below my right armpit extending to about halfway under my rib cage. It had started
creeping up on me the night before. I was being productive at work, but in the corner of my mind, I was once again preparing for the worst…which brings me back to the beginning
of this post.

Three days, three death watches. It was time to stop preparing for the worst (again) and take action.

I tried to make an appointment with Dr. Rawlings, the first doctor I've had since leaving Buenos Aires four and a half years ago who makes me feel like I'm
in the hands of someone who cares. It might be an act, but that's pretty much all you need when you're a hypochondriac like me. Go through the motions.
Touch me with your stethoscope. Look down my throat. Then tell me I'm perfectly healthy and I'll die another day.

Unfortunately, Dr. Rawlings wasn't in, so I was given an appointment with Dr. Way. I was assured by Susannah the receptionist that I'd like him. She knew
about my previous unpleasant experience with a doctor there who was not Dr. Rawlings. I can't even recall now why I'd seen him. The only thing I remember
is that he called me the Aussie slang word for hypochondriac. I laughed it off at the time, but on the inside I was seething.

Dr. Way didn't call me any names, but he made me feel a lot worse before I started to feel better. When I walked into his office and he asked me what was
wrong, I explained my symptoms and added that I thought I might be having a heart attack. I knew how ridiculous I was being. A heart attack is faster on
its feet - it would never wait overnight and through half of the morning to catch up to you. But the bottom line was fear. What the hell was
wrong with me?

Dr. Way looked dubious. He stood up and pressed my upper right torso in a few places. Then he laughed.

"You're fine," he announced. "But since you're already here, if you want me to find something wrong, I can keep looking."

I was shocked. It wasn't that I was actually expecting a dire diagnosis, but I had anticipated at least some semblance of an examination, followed by a
good reason why I felt like shit on my right side, from the neck down and abs up.

When I pressed, he at least gave me a name. I had something called costochondritis, which is an inflammation of cartilage in the chest area. He printed out a
few sheets of paper and handed them to me. I wasn't having a heart attack but the assumption he had ridiculed me for hadn't been so off.

According to the costochondritis literature he gave me: "It might feel like you're having a heart attack. If you are in doubt, see your doctor as soon as
possible…"

So there.

"But if you were having a heart attack, I hope you'd go to the ER before coming to me," he said.

Then the lecture began. On my previous visit to Dr. Rawlings two weeks earlier for an assortment of ailments (some real, some possibly imagined, none serious), we had
talked about the panic disorder I was diagnosed with before I left New York City nine years ago. She recommended treatments that didn't involve taking
potentially addictive sleeping pills.

Having looked at my chart, Dr. Way had apparently done the math. He deduced that I was a raging hypochondriac before I even entered to room. Dr.
Rawlings' notes in my file about those panic attacks aroused his suspicions, and one minute with me confirmed them.

Yes, my name is Jeremy Helligar, and I'm a hypochondriac. So what?

I may not have been dying, but I had something. I wanted answers.

Instead of giving me any further details about the diagnosis he had handed to me - what brought it on, how to ease the pain, how long it would last - he
started to lecture me about being a hypochondriac. He told me a story about a lifelong hypochondriac who, on his deathbed, said, "See, I told you I was
sick." The implication was that I would go out in a similar fashion.

Maybe I would, but what about the pain I was actually feeling and the diagnosis he had given me? I wasn't there for a therapy session. I was there for
physical relief from discomfort that I definitely was not imagining.

I may not have been having a heart attack, but I was suffering from something. I wasn't crazy. Should I have gone about my business wracked with pain, not
sure what was going on, when there was clearly something - albeit something non-threatening - ailing me?

He agreed, but I could tell I had lost him. He wasn't going to take me seriously. I felt like Dorothy Zbornak in the "Sick and Tired" double episode of The Golden Girls. She was feeling ill and doctors kept dismissing her until one finally diagnosed her with chronic fatigue syndrome.

As with my costochondritis, there was no specific cause of her ailment and no cure, but just knowing that what was wrong with her had a name made Dorothy feel
better.

I felt better, too. And I felt worse. The diagnosis was worth the trip to the doctor, but I felt my $85 would have been better spent
had it come with compassion and maybe the motions of a routine check-up…you know, just in case something else was wrong.

The irony: Dr. Way's lecturing and hectoring will probably result in more anxiety during future bouts of hypochondria. Now every time I feel any strange physical
sensation, I won't only be preparing for the worst…again. I'll also be terrified about what the doctor might say if the doctor isn't Dr. Rawlings.

I hadn't had a female doctor before, and at first I was a bit wary of having one. But when I returned to work and explained what had happened to my colleagues,
one of them warned me about male Aussie doctors. They had a habit of being breezy and dismissive, she said.

That's not the treatment any hypochondriac needs. We need reassurance without ridicule. I've always embraced a certain gallows humor, but when it comes to
my health, I laugh alone.

The last thing I need in my life is more fear. That was the highest cost of my latest doctor visit. Sadly, my insurance (which pays less than 50 percent)
can't reimburse me for that.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Death becomes great actors. Kassie DePaiva has been proving that week in, week out for weeks now, ever since the daughter of her Days of Our Lives
character Eve Donovan Larson died at the hands of the show's latest serial killer. Now the murderer has struck again. Victim No. 3: the beloved legacy
character Will Horton.

Will's death, predictably, has led to impressive grief scenes from pretty much the entire cast, especially Deirdre Hall, Camila Banus and Alison Sweeney,
who has returned to the show to offer a grief-stricken coda to her exit storyline last year in which her character Sami Brady, lost her husband EJ DiMera
to a day player's bullet. In show time, Will's death was exactly one year after EJ's demise, and Alison's performances since her return have been flawless.

But are wonderful performances and a few weeks of storyline worth the loss of someone with ties to nearly every person on the show, not to mention one of
daytime TV's few gay characters? The soap blogosphere has been seething because in killing off Will Horton, they've not only effectively ended daytime's first
gay supercouple -- Will and his husband Sonny Kiriakis -- but it feels like they've undone all the LGBTQ progress they made over the past several years, first with
Will's coming out story and then with Will and Sonny's wedding, daytime's first gay nuptials.

It would be especially stinging if killing off Will was the result of homophobic viewers and advertisers who didn't want to see such supposed sinfulness on
their TV screens (the same ones who don't have a problem with serial killers on TV because they're not as bad as gays). The show recently changed its
head-writing team, and during the transition process, WilSon (as Will and Sonny are affectionately called by fans) had already been effectively ruined.
Wasn't that enough?

Sonny left town to take a job in Paris after portrayer Freddie Smith left the show. And Will, who had turned into a nasty, scheming bitch boy after
cheating on Sonny with Sonny's former flame Paul Narita, pretty much disappeared for weeks. They dragged him back out of the closet (pun intended) only a few days
before stuffing him back in there (permanently, in a body bag).

After grieving for a week or so, Sonny will exit again, leaving Paul, mostly MIA for weeks until a few days after Will's death, as the only gay in Salem because, well, gays and
Days just don't mix.

OK, maybe that isn't fair. Honestly, I have no idea why the powers that be at Days decided that Will had to die. In real life, everyone has to go sometime, and death, like shit, happens all the time in soaps. I made my peace with that and moved on shortly after the rumors surfaced that Will would
soon be a goner.

My problem isn't so much that Will was killed off but how it happened. He was strangled by Ben Weston, a lame character whose previous victims had all been
women. One of his intended stranglees, Deirdre Hall's Marlena Evans, happened to be Will's grandmother. She was saved from certain death by Chad DiMera,
the guy that most of the town thinks is the serial killer.

The interesting twist is that Marlena, who must be pushing 70 like her portrayer, put up one hell of an impressive fight. That's a lot more than I can say
for Will. In a scene last week with Will's mother Sami, Marlena talked about how she was initially in a state of denial after finding out about her
grandson's death. The killer had been targeting women only, and Will was young and strong. Surely he'd put up a fight. Right?

Exactly. Only the writers let Will go without much of a fuss from him on his own behalf. He struggled with Ben for a few moments and fell and hit his head.
When he came to. Ben was choking the life out of him. The end.

As I watched, I thought about a recent murder/suffocation scene on How to Get Away with Murder where both the victim and the killer were women.
The former was tied up at the time, which made the latter's task a cinch. We know why the victim didn't put up much of a catfight. But why didn't
the writers let Will at least have that?

Was it because they think all gay men are weaklings? Do they believe that a gay man isn't a real man and can't fight back? Eight and half years ago,
shortly after I moved to Buenos Aires, I was attacked by three burglars in my apartment. I fought like hell on the bathroom floor, and for a while, I was
winning. I even managed to get what I thought was the intended murder weapon -- a screwdriver! -- away from the robber who was waving it in front of my face.

I'd never been much of a fighter before that fateful Sunday afternoon, but that bathroom scene proved that I was willing to give as good as I got when my
life depended on it. I know Will wasn't meant to survive, but couldn't they at least have let his final scenes alive be colored by an emotion other than
fear?

It's possible they weren't even considering Will's sexuality when they wrote his wimpy exit. And if that's the case, shame on them. A good writer knows to
consider things from all angles. Perception can be everything, regardless of intent. When writing for minority characters -- gay, black, or whatever -- it's
important to consider all the possible implications of how their scenes play out.

But without consciousness, there's no awareness. I keep hoping that the writer's will let Will come back as a ghost. He'd taunt Ben, maybe even slap him
around a little. Wait, make that punch him around a little. It won't bring Will back for good, but at least in a way he'll finally get to go out
fighting.

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